Day 199

My sorrow is so wide I cannot cross to the other bank.
So deep the full moon drifts back and forth
on its surface but cannot touch the silty bottom.
A baby taken by Caesarian from her dead mother.
Who will care for her?  Decaying bodies
of children in the ruins of a hospital.
Do not look for the angel of mercy; she is tending 
the unfound, the unburied. Once, in Borgo San Sepolcro,
I stood for hours in front of Pier della Francesca’s
Madonna della Misericordia:  her broad skirt
sheltering the poor, the broken.  Come now, 
whatever you are that rains mercy down upon us
like the spray that rises from a river.
Give us some coolness, some gentleness.